


Going to Sleep Angry

by Coshledak



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Post-Divorce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-07
Updated: 2011-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-27 00:52:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/289778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coshledak/pseuds/Coshledak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles has a rule about going to bed after a fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going to Sleep Angry

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for **contessaofchaos** on tumblr. She wanted a fanfiction post-paralyzed Charles with Erik carrying him to bed, based off of this picture here: http://vivienka.deviantart.com/gallery/31825219#/d3ih5tq
> 
> So, this is what I came up with. : )
> 
> ———————————

For all their advanced genetics, they still fight. Erik doesn't, of course, expect his ability to manipulate magnetic fields to be something helpful in making his lover see his point (even if that would be quite nice). He never claimed that he did either, which is precisely why he hates it when Charles points out that humans and mutants are still so similar that he and Erik still fight. Of course they still fight. When did he ever say that their genetics would prevent such a thing?

It's the fighting that leads to Charles avoiding him for the rest of the evening, going to his study and resolutely keeping the door closed. Erik can open it, of course, but he doesn't. It's a boundary that he's grown to expect because everyone should have some place they can be alone. For Charles, it just happens to be a particular study on the first floor that no one trespasses in when the door is closed. His office? Fine. The library? Perfectly acceptable. But not that study.

For a while Erik retreats to his own solitary space—his office on the second floor—and spends some time thinking as a stream of paperclips twirls in a figure eight in front of his steepled fingers. He doesn't run through the argument again because it's one they've been having for years and will continue to have despite the growth of the Xavier Institute; despite the children they teach; despite the mutants they house; despite the bed they share. Erik needs to keep hold of those last few inches so that he can be ready for when that inevitable war comes, and he suppose that Charles needs to keep hold of his own argument as well, though the reasons are more elusive.

Instead his thoughts turn over his lesson plans and the training that he'll be responsible for the next day. He tries to think about how long it's been since the fight happened and Charles' rule about not going to bed angry with each other. Erik's always thought it was a ridiculous rule, but he's too often thankful for it to complain the way that he used to. No, he just resigns himself to the fact that they'll need to come to the same compromise that they always have. It's the compromise that had him coming back here after Cuba, and he supposed it was the compromise that would keep him here.

Eventually—one, two, four hours after the fight—he goes back downstairs to their bedroom. Everything is on the first floor for them and he's grown used to it. Ground floors had always made him feel vulnerable, but it's one of the smaller prices he has to pay for mistakes made. Charles' wheelchair would be a burden if they stayed on any higher floors, because he doesn't like being levitated if there's a perfectly suitable alternative. Having to be carried upstairs every night and downstairs every morning would be dreadful for him, Erik knows, so they stay on the first floor.

An hour passes when he's alone in the bedroom, which isn't such a terrible thing until ten starts to drift to eleven and eleven turns to eleven forty-five and Charles still hasn't returned. He isn't alarmed—or at least he tries not to be, tries to hear Charles' voice telling him in his mind that if anything happens he'll know about it—but decides not to wait. Boundaries be damned, they have early classes to teach in the morning and he'd like to be absolved so he can sleep.

The study door is still closed when he gets there and he raps on it gently to no immediate answer. It isn't a large study, he knows, so Charles should have been able to hear him. There's no soft pressure in his mind—that slight feeling of “he's not ready” that usually popped up—so he dares to unlock the door as quietly as possible and go inside.

“Charles?”

The room is dimly lit, a couch moved off to the side of an unused fireplace and plenty of space for Charles' chair to maneuver around. It's set beside a small table stacked with books and a light that's on; Erik can see the back of Charles' head from where he's standing. He frowns.

“I don't think this is any reason to give me the silent treatment,” he says, mumbles, really. He crosses his arms and shifts his weight between his feet. “I'd like to go to sleep, if that's alright. So can we talk about—”

The sound that Charles makes then is so quiet that Erik nearly misses it, even though he isn't talking all that loudly. It isn't a sound of argument or disapproval or wariness of an argument—it isn't even coherent. It's a quiet murmur, almost a sigh, like the sort that chases after a yawn. Erik's heard these sounds before, which is precisely why he marches forward in front of the chair.

Naturally he would have been talking to an _already sleeping_ Charles.

He huffs. “Oh, so I'm not permitted to go to sleep angry, but you are?”

He gives himself the illusion that he's angry for a few moments as his attention trails over Charles' face. He's sunk a bit in his chair, his head angled awkwardly back against it in a way that has given him neck problems in the past when he's drifted off in a similar position. Fingers are holding a book to his stomach with the last remnants of consciousness, and Erik can practically hear his thought processes: _I'll just put it down for a moment_. Then one moment turns into two, into five, into a nap, into an uncomfortable night's sleep. He fell asleep in strange positions before he'd been paralyzed, too; Erik is rather uncertain why he ever thought that would change.

Charles' fingers twitch against the brown spine of the book, and Erik's attention jerks back up to his face as though he's worried about being caught. He isn't, and whatever afterthought of awareness Charles had been struck with fades instantly. There's a slight knot to his eyebrows, like he knows he's uncomfortable but he's too fuzzy about the mind to care.

It strikes him then that there is no genuine air of anger about Charles, just the unpleasantness of a forming crick in his neck, which is certainly nothing to do with Erik. It's obnoxious, really, how he can have fallen asleep after a fight and yet not broken his own damn rule.

Erik decides not to invest himself in it and instead moves forward; moving Charles to the bedroom is something of an apology, really, which means that—if Charles were awake—they'd have reconciled and he could go to sleep without being angry. This logic is nothing short of fool-proof.

“Alright then,” he sighs. “Typical.”

It takes some manipulation of the chair—bending the side out of place so he can slip his arms under Charles' legs and behind his back—but he puts it back into its proper place when he's lifted the prone telepath. One of Charles' arms slips to the irretrievable space off to his side where Erik can't get it, but the other folds over his chest with the book. The blankets bunch about Erik's wrists, and it rather feels like when he's folded his cape over his arm in the past. But he banishes the thought when Charles' head rolls against his chest. He murmurs again, his fingers twitch, and drifts back to sleep.

Erik finds himself smiling by the time he gets to the bedroom, unable to remember the expression forming between there and the study. The chair trailed after him, lifted a few silent inches off the floor, and he set it down on Charles' side of the bed for morning use. He lays the telepath out on the blankets, removing the red throw that Charles had settled over his lap and letting it fall back on the wheelchair.

He sets about gingerly removing his hand from the book, slipping his belt free, and taking off his shoes to set them on the floor. He presses his lips to the unfeeling skin of Charles' ankles when he takes his socks off, lowering both down to the bed in turn as carefully as possible. He removes the vest, undoes another button on the dress shirt, and deems anything further as too much of a risk of waking him. Charles already threatens to stir a few times while he's working before he drifts back to sleep. Erik covers him with the blankets and watches as Charles buries his face into the pillow.

Erik changes into proper clothes before settling into bed himself, propping himself on an elbow next to Charles. His breathing his deep and even, the familiar pattern of sleep that he's come to memorize over the past three years since they'd fixed what he'd thought broken on the beach. Erik chances the opportunity to reach out, brushing his fingers through the bangs—Charles' hair is getting long—and watching as they drift right back to where he'd tried to shoo them from. It wouldn't be Charles if some part of him wasn't being difficult.

He leans forward and presses his lips to Charles' forehead. “No waking up angry.”

There isn't a reply—he isn't expecting one—and he settles into his spot on the bed. His arm drapes over Charles' hip haphazardly; the lights turn off with just the hint of a thought.


End file.
